This week, the Idealis featured Micah Vandegrift’s (Florida State University -> North Carolina State University) preprint, “Designing Digital Scholarship Ecologies,” in which he offers a holistic view of digital scholarship and outlines how it is changing the academic library landscape. From the abstract:

Digital Scholarship and Scholarly Communication are transforming the practice of librarianship by 1) integrating throughout the research process, 2) re-positioning the core of libraries, 3) increasing focus on “back of the house” processes/skills, 4) facilitating an outward orientation. Approaching these through the frames of design and ecology offer a useful re-imagining of our current state and possible futures.

Noting that many libraries are already on the path of reimagining their position in the digital scholarship ecosystem, Vandegrift foresees “an evolution of the library where the initial state has been totally transformed through scholarly communication and digital scholarship, where there is no digital center, instead an ecosystem wherein new ideas are generated, incubated, and enveloped into the university, the locality, and the global community.”